Is Inequality Bad For Our Health? (New Democracy Forum) - Softcover

Daniels, Norman; Kennedy, Bruce; Ichiro Kawachi; Joshua Cohen; Joel Rogers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807004472 ISBN 13: 9780807004470

Publisher: Beacon Press, 2001

Synopsis

In this election year, health care again proves to be one of our nation's most urgent issues. Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi shift the focus of the debate, forcing us to take a closer look at how our health is affected by social injustice and inequality. Arguing that it isn't enough to increase access to doctors, they call for improving social conditions-such as poverty, lack of education and affordable housing, and harmful work environments-that damage our health. By urging us to work toward equality of opportunity for all, the authors situate health care reform among the larger social problems we must face.

The authors' argument for reform in early childhood development, nutrition, work environment, and distribution of income is certain to spark debate. The editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and World Health Organization officials respond.

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About this title

About the Author:

Norman Daniels is Goldthwaite Professor of Philosophy and professor of medical ethics at Tufts University and the author of Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilibrium in Theory and Practice. Bruce Kennedy is deputy director of public health practice at the Harvard School of Public Health. Ichiro Kawachi is director of the Harvard Center for Society and Health and coeditor of The Society and Population Health Reader: Income Inequality and Health. They live in the Boston area.

From Publishers Weekly:

"We have long known that more affluent and better-educated members of a society tend to live longer and healthier," state the authors at the outset of the essay at the heart of this slim volume. They aim to recast the debate about health care in America. Instead of just worrying about cost and access, Daniels, Kennedy and Kawachi argue that in order to deal with health inequalities, we need to remedy the problem of income inequality." In making this argument, the three academics (Daniels is a philosopher; Kennedy and Kawachi are public health scholars) draw both on broad-brush statistics (showing, for instance, that states with fairer income distributions boast better health) and on philosopher John Rawls's influential theory of justice. Along the way, they recommend four policy proposals: early childhood interventions; nutritional supplements for poor women and children; changes in the workplace environment; and income redistribution. In a series of responses to this essay, several scholarsAsuch as Marcia Angell, the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of MedicineAtake issue with aspects of the authors' proposal, arguing, for example, that the social causes of poor health (wealth? occupation?) remain unclear; that their argument ignores differentials based on gender or race; and perhaps most potently, that their "utopian" plan nudges aside the "doable but difficult task of making medical care more fairly distributed." Still, the basic point proposed by Daniels, Kennedy and KawachiAthat good health depends mainly on factors outside the health care sectorAshould prompt a more textured debate on health policy. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0807004472
• ISBN 13: 9780807004470
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112